How The Walking Dead May Have Just Given Rick's Group An Advantage Over Negan

With its Season 8 premiere, The Walking Dead opened the All Out War up with a shifting timeline that had audiences asking lots of questions. Aside from the flash-forward sequence and the new character that popped up, the episode also showed off the bullet train that Team Family brought to the Sanctuary, though it wasn't at all clear why Rick and the others put on such a big show with the heavy artillery when there's not an endless supply of guns and ammo. But when "Some Guy" wasn't busy killing off loads of other characters, it introduced Rick to a slew of new weapons.

The previously teased deaths that rocked tonight's Walking Dead happened after Saviors lethally turned the tides on the Kingdom's outpost attack, first seen in last week's episode. Carol was one of the survivors of that particular attack, since she'd made it into the compound and faced a few of the most hair-raising moments she's seen in a while. She caught wind that these Saviors were moving their massive gun collection to the Sanctuary, and then took it upon herself to take the villains out. This pack of impolite dipshits wasted as many bullets as possible during this engagement, too, so it's not like they deserved all those guns.

Carol played nice and innocent, which she's been so good at in the past, although the Saviors definitely weren't sharing the nice vibes when they shot their own dude -- Joey totally pooched it, didn't he? -- during Carol's attempt to take him hostage. Only two Saviors were left alive when Carol spied Ezekiel and Jerry in the midst of taking on a crowd of walkers. Faced with such a big dilemma, Carol chose to help out her Kingdom fam, which allowed the Saviors to get away with the gun stash.

This tale did not have a happy ending for those two Saviors, however, and they did not make it to the end of the episode still alive. As they were making their jeep-fueled escape, Rick and Daryl showed up for a fun chase sequence before catching caught up with them on the road; turns out Carol was telling them the truth about others being out there, even if she wasn't totally sure of it. Rick turned into an '80s action hero for a second and jumped into the Jeep, stabbing the Savior and forcing him to drive off the road. Rick survived, of course -- Daryl added insult to injury by telling him he looked like shit -- and they now have control of all the guns.

We haven't heard from Negan in a while, and he'll be back next week. Which means Rick and the respective communities won't have very long to spread the weaponized wealth in order to take on whatever retaliatory efforts Negan is planning. But in this world, it's far better to be short on time than short on weapons. With a new influx of firearms and some cunning plans, Team Family could find themselves the All Out War victors much sooner than we'd previously thought. Not that it will turn out that way, of course. Losing all those Kingdom soldiers isn't going to be a big help, in any case.

The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC at 9:00 p.m. ET. While the zombie drama will be on the air for many years to come, you can check out all the shows that were cancelled and came to a close in 2017 with our handy rundown. And then head to our fall TV premiere schedule to see all the shows yet to debut and return this year.